Then, as they were conversing and sharing cups of wine, a truly remarkable portent occurred. One of the flock of hens began running round the middle of the yard cackling in the usual way, as if she wanted to lay an egg. Her master looked at her and said, “What a good, productive girl you are! You have been fattening us such a long time now with your daily deliveries. Now too, I see, you are planning to prepare us our appetiser. Boy,” he went on, “put the basket that is kept for the laying hens in its usual corner.” The slave made the preparations just as he was ordered, but the hen spurned the nest of her customary couch and laid her egg right at her master’s feet. The delivery was premature but destined to cause very great anxiety, for it was not an egg as we know them that she laid, but a fully developed chick with feathers and claws and eyes and a chirp, and it immediately began to follow its mother around. (tr. John Arthur Hanson)

At this point a mighty fit of trembling seized the scoundrel, a deathly pallor took the place of his normal complexion, and cold sweat flowed over hir entire body. He shuffled his feet unsteadily, scratched first one part of his head and then another, and muttered with his mouth half-closed, babbling some sort of nonsense. Absolutely no one could reasonably believe that he was free of guilt. (tr. John Arthur Hanson)